Lou Ouzer

A life in every face

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Next to his 1966 Igor Stravinsky portrait, Rochester
photographer Lou Ouzer (1913-2002) is quoted: "I look for background before I
take anyone's picture." It's a simple rule, but one that allowed Ouzer to
capture a life in every photograph. The portrait of Stravinsky, for example,
doesn't show much of the composer's face. Taken in profile, it is all
contemplation and heavy-rimmed glasses. You wouldn't recognize him from this
picture, but you feel as if you know him.

A collection of Ouzer's portraits and abstract photos are on
display at Image City Photography Gallery, and the number of works piled into
the small, new space is a tribute to the man's long career (he took photos for
the Eastman School on a freelance basis for 60 years). The fact that each
portrait --- though many were taken in very similar circumstances and
surroundings --- is uniquely and strongly the subject's alone, inviolately
individual, is a tribute to his talent.

There are famous names here, but you find yourself drawn
instead to the geography of the faces. The 1972 photo of the conductor and
pianist Vladimir Ashkenazy, for example, which Ouzer took "as if he were a monk
in a cell with no light," shows just the portions of the man's face that
protrude out of the photo's darkness: nose, forehead, cheekbone. Violinist
Yehudi Menuhin (1965), standing in a tuxedo, has a mountain for a face. The
lighting and the unflinching concentration of the photo show off his features
like a topographic map. For him, Ouzer wanted a portrait "that could have been
done with a hammer and chisel."

Simple, head-on portraits are rare in this collection. There
are, instead, these face studies and quiet, candid shots. Pianist Rudolph
Serkin (1974), for example, on stage at the Eastman Theatre, is caught peeking
out of the closed curtain to count the house. A slice of light illuminates the
front half of his face, showing a boyish and hopeful expression. Howard Hanson,
an old man in a photo taken in 1979, has his arms raised, his face engaged, as
he conducts a group of Eastman students.

There is a collection of Ouzer's more rarely seen abstract
photos as well. Nylon and silk and bubble wrap are lit and twisted and pressed
against the lens to create sultry images with rich texture. Many of these are
demurely sexy: the silhouette of a woman leaning in shadow, a torso seen through
black lace, a woman's crossed, stockinged legs shown from hip to ankle.

But there is nothing coy about his work. Each photo,
abstract or realistic, offers a clear and steady look. And it's a photographer
dedicated to research, to teasing out the personality and the texture, who
offers it.

You should go if you
want to see musicians wear their hearts on their faces.